Before I forget

This is the link to the Norwich Oven google calendar that I keep losing. I'm sticking it here so that I can find it.



I'm baking my first solo load today and dropping the results at The Haven this evening if all goes well. Should be something like 8 loaves of Daily Bread, and 5 of a beer bread made with spent barley grains from the brew session earlier this week. Assuming these loaves aren't as suicidal as the last...

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=rbklf3nmsl3uf91rh4s91flq0c%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York

the Magical Fruit

Just harvested my first handful of ripe hops from the vines. After a night in the dehydrator they will be ready for a class in beer brewing later this week. Now that I have a camera again, more photo-documentation of all the tall-tales in the making. MOre later.

Medical School: Where Hi-Liters and Cups of Coffee Go to Die

I'm sitting in a cardio-pathophysiology lecture (half) listening to a most excellent lecturer, a pathologist with a bushy white mustache and mild Austrian accent. Second year is exponentially better than the first. The classes actually discuss things that happen to human beings and not abstruse diagrams or fruit flies. Lots of fun things happening now that I won't get into at the moment. I just wanted to post an update and hopefully get myself into the habit, even if it's at the expense of paying attention.

As the Crow Flies

Thetford, VT to North Brunswick, NJ: 259
NB to Newark: 25
Newark to Dublin: 3188
Dublin to Cosenza, Calabria: 1436
Calabria to Dublin: 1436
Dublin to Newark: 3188
Newark to North Brunswick: 25
North Brunswick to Nashville, TN: 730
Nashville to Mobile, AL: 385
Mobile to Atlanta, GA: 307
Atlanta to Nashville: 212
Nashville to North Brunswick: 730
North Brunswick to Thetford: 259

Total: 12,180 miles
Approx circumference of the earth at the equator: 25000 miles.

Stromboli

Nikki and I have just returned from a day trip to the Aeolian Islands, not quite the home of the winds, but to a couple of cartoonishly volcanic volcanos. We swam in the clearest water I have ever seen, that from bottles included, and lounged on black sand under the cliffs and sulphur clouds of the smoldering Stromboli. We are both a bit "cotto", (cooked) but will live. Tomorrow we spend our morning searching the little cemetaries of the hill towns for Nikki's relatives' friends' graves, and then say good bye to her remaining family before setting off for Naples the next morning. I promise to upload some of the 1000 plus photos nikki's taken, tomorrow.
ciao

The Best

Nikki and I have just stepped off of the 6th of what will be 7 trains connecting the distant places of Poperinge Belgium, a small hop-growing town and WW1 battle front in West Flanders, and Pescara Italy on the coast of the Adriatic sea. After a pilgramage to the secluded Trappist monastery of Westvleteren for what is widely called the best beer in the world, Nikki and I returned to Brusells for the afternoon to await our overnight train to Milano. Our route required a change of trains in Frankfurt Germany at midnight, and due to a mistranslation somewhere, we missed our train. We were then booked on a train through the swiss alps to Basel, where we were promptly charged 75$ a piece for not having the right papers or tickets despite the assurances of our angry german train person that we would be fine. After sleeping that off, we stepped into the velveteen air of the ungodly milan train station filled with sweating, smoking people, standing in lines longer than the trains they were waiting on, under the shade of the fascism saturated neo-classical/modern train station, sans- airconditioning. Half of the ticket machines were out of order, and one supposedly worked although it did not accept any form of currency or card. Luckily we found a machine that did, bought tickets for the first train to Bologna, where I am now at an internet cafe drinking cold fizzy water in the blasting cooled air. In a few hours Nikki and I will take our final train for the day to Pescara, after sampling some of the legendary cuisine of Bologna. Ciao.

Filling in the Gaps

So the last few days has been more eventful than I anthologized. After our blitzkrieg tour of Dublin, featuring an appearance by the 9th Century Book of Kells, and exhaustion-repelling Guinness.


After a visit to the world's most well-stocked pub for shockingly fresh belgian beer, we collapsed in our hotel room for our first night of sleep in 2 days. The next morning we took a meandering bus ride between windmills, serenaded by the what I'm sure was profanity, coming from the mouth of our eccentric Dutch bus driver. We've had a relaxing past few days riding a boat on the canals, touring a ducth micro-brewery run by the mentally ill, and visiting museums. Tomorrow we board a noon bus bound for Anwerp to visit some of Nikki's native friends.